[nagual]

As many people have already had a Live 24Bit, I thaught  it would be a good idea to compare it with a DAC in the same budget, in fact the cheaper one in the market, I think.  My  PC is an old Athlon,  tweaked to be as (EM) noiseless as I could get, connected through an optical cable  to an Edifier M3400, and a pair of Philips SHP 2700 phones,  running WinXP SP3 + WMP 11 + Asio4all.
The Fiio D3 has cost me US$28,00, total price (!!!),  and arrived last monday.   In the few hours I had to listen to it, I must say I expected it to "sound better"  than my old SB, which doesn´t happened, as I could not discern one from the other.  Even so, I could detect some differences between both: At the same position of the volume knob, the SB is louder, and could drive the phones accordingly, what didn´t happen with the D3.  Also the SB, after one or more hours listenig, is less fatiguing.
 I believed the digital output was always better than the analog, at least compared to cheap sound cards, but the Live 24Bit surprised me !   I think it was due to the (EM) "noiseless"  case, that has balanced things in some way, and a better signal/noise DAC.
The goal of this little review, is to improve the discussion in a market area that is sometimes forgotten here.
Best regards...